The topic for the class was music and the one student who had shown up at that point asked the interesting question whether we say (or should say) boy band or boy group, and girl band or girl group. I was momentarily flummoxed, because I don’t usually talk about … whatever they are. Fortunately, there was a break immediately afterwards, so I did some quick research. It turns out that boy band is much more common than boy group, and girl group is more common than girl band. Among other things, Wikipedia’s relevant pages are titled boy band and girl group. Possibly the reason is simple alliteration. (Google Ngrams shows boy band from the 1860s. I wonder what kind those were then.)
There is a rock band from Ireland named Girl Band, who are all boys. On the other hand, there was Girlband, a pop group from Australia, who are all girls, and Girlband, a girl band from England, who are also all girls.
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Never Pure and Rarely Simple 